in World News Found: 16th Century Map Challenges Current Knowledge of History
Antarctica was officially discovered in 1773 by Capt. James Cook, the first person known to cross the Antarctic circle and circumnavigate that continent.
However, a document found in 1929 that was believed to have been created in the early 16th century — more than 200 years prior to Cook’s discovery — appeared to depict Antarctica, according to the U.K. Express.
The document, named the “Piri Reis Map” after the Ottoman admiral and cartographer Piri Reis, who created it, was dated 919 in the Muslim calendar, which corresponded to 1513 in the Western calendar, researchers at the University of Wisconsin reported.
Reis wrote in an inscription on the map that he used 20 source materials from various cartographers in creating the map, including contemporary Portuguese maps and some that may have been passed down from the time of Alexander the Great or earlier, according to the Epoch Times.
While the appearance of Antarctica on this early map was remarkable, scientists have had a hard time reconciling some obvious discrepancies between the appearance of the continent on the Piri Reis map and what the continent actually looks like today.
For example, the 16th century map showed Antarctica much more northeastern than it is today. It also lacked the snow and ice coverage that we know defines the frozen continent, and notes in the margin of the document indicated that it was a “warm climate.”
Furthermore, the 600-mile-wide Drake Passage was not shown on the map, nor were the large islands in the Weddell Sea.
In fact, the land mass considered Antarctica on the map actually shared a coastline with South America — which is misshapen. While Brazil was clearly discernible, as the coastline is traced farther south it juts out east, seemingly depicting a land mass — Antarctica — in a place where no such land mass exists today.
Thus scientists have been considering unanswered and problematic questions.
Did Antarctica go through a sudden geographical and climate shift in the roughly 200 years from the time of Reis’ drawing to the discovery by Capt. Cook?
That explanation has its problems, though, as studies have concluded that the last time Antarctica was ice-free was around 4,000 B.C., according to the Express.
One theory about the true origin of the map involved an ancient, little-known sea-conquering civilization.
Charles Hapgood, a Keene (New Hampshire) State College history professor who has authored several books on the subject of ancient maps, believed the information on the Piri Reis map had been “passed down from people to people.”
“It appears that the charts must have originated with a people unknown and they were passed on, perhaps by the Minoans and the Phoenicians, who were, for a thousand years and more, the greatest sailors of the ancient world,” Hapgood explained.
Capt. Lorenzo W. Burroughs, a U.S. Air Force officer in the cartographic section, wrote a letter to Hapgood in 1961 saying that the “Antarctica” depicted on the Piri Reis map seemed to accurately show Antarctica’s coast as it is under the ice.
Do you think this strange land mass on the Piri Reis map was meant to be Antarctica? If so, how did the cartographer know about it two centuries before it was officially discovered?
http://conservativetribune.com/unexplainable-16th-century-map/